Chapter 10: Mohit

I watched them from behind the bleachers.

Not in a creepy way — in the way a person who happened to be at the academy at 6:15 AM because he was checking the mascot costume storage locker (the tail had detached again, the safety pin having: surrendered) happened to observe two people on the kabaddi mat through the gap between the aluminium bleacher seats. Happened to observe: Tanvi coaching Veer Malhotra.

She was: extraordinary.

I had known this. I had known it the way you know the sun rises — as fact, as certainty, as the specific kind of knowledge that doesn't require: thought. But knowing it and seeing it were: different. Seeing Tanvi on the mat, in her tracksuit and court shoes, demonstrating the raider's approach angle — not telling Veer, showing him, her body moving with the ghost of the raider she'd been, the raider whose muscle memory lived in her shoulders and hips even though the disease had taken the: endurance — was seeing a person in the space where they: belonged.

"Your entry is: straight," she told him. "Every time. Straight line to the baulk line. The defenders know. They've watched your footage from Punjab. They know you go straight and then cut left. So: don't."

"Don't cut left?"

"Don't go straight. Approach at an angle. Forty-five degrees, right side. The cover defender will shift to compensate. That opens the: lane. Then you cut: left. Same finish, different: entry. They won't read it."

Veer tried it. The approach was: wrong. Too wide. Tanvi stopped him. Adjusted his stance — her hand on his shoulder, repositioning the angle, the touch of a coach who saw the body as: geometry and moved it like a: protractor.

My jaw: clenched.

I noticed. Unclenched. Clenched again. The jaw had a mind of its own and that mind was: not interested in my: instructions.

"Again," Tanvi said. Veer tried again. Closer. The angle was thirty degrees instead of forty-five, but the lane opened, and the ghost defenders that Tanvi had described in their tactical conversation would have: shifted.

"Better," she said. "But the hand contact — you're reaching with the: arm. Reach with the shoulder. The shoulder extends your reach by six inches and protects the hand from the chain."

She demonstrated. The shoulder lead. The way a raider's body became a lance — the shoulder first, the hand following, the touch on the defender's hip that scored the point while the body was already: retreating. The movement was fluid, practised, the movement of a woman whose body remembered what her: illness had taken.

Veer was watching her with the expression of a person who had just discovered: something. Not a technique. A: person. The expression said: you are remarkable, and I am: noticing.

I left. Through the back door, past the storage lockers, into the October morning. The air was: sharp. The kind of sharp that Kasauli mornings specialised in — cold that entered the lungs like a blade, cold that made your eyes water and your nose run and your body: wake up with the resentful alertness of a system that had been: ambushed by: temperature.

I walked to the flat. Made tea. Not chai — plain tea, the English kind, the kind that Nani had taught me to make because Nani had grown up in a Kasauli where the British influence was still: fresh, and Nani's tea was: Darjeeling, loose leaf, no milk, one sugar, steeped for exactly four minutes, served in a porcelain cup with a saucer because "mugs are for people who have given up on: civilisation."

Nani. I should visit Nani.

*

Nani's house was on the upper road, past Monkey Point, a Victorian-era cottage that had been in the Bhardwaj family since my great-grandfather bought it from a departing British officer in 1948 for a price that was, by modern standards: criminal, and by 1948 standards: fair. The cottage was: crumbling. Not dramatically — not falling down — but crumbling in the specific way that old Kasauli houses crumbled, the plaster peeling from the stone walls, the wooden window frames warping from decades of monsoon-and-frost cycles, the garden growing: wild because Nani, at eighty-two, had decided that gardens should be: free.

"The garden is not wild," she corrected me every time. "The garden is: liberated."

Nani was on the verandah. In her chair — the wooden rocking chair that my grandfather had built before he died, the chair that creaked at a frequency that was: comforting if you were Nani and alarming if you were: anyone else, because the creaking sounded like the chair was one rock away from: disintegration.

"Mohit." She didn't look up from her knitting — a scarf, the fifteenth this year, because Nani knitted scarves the way other people breathed, continuously and without: conscious decision. The scarves were: legendary in Kasauli. Every shopkeeper, every postman, every stray dog had, at some point, been draped in one of Nani's scarves. The dogs looked: uncomfortable but: warm.

"Nani."

"Tea?"

"I've had tea."

"You've had: your tea. Now have: mine."

This was: not negotiable. Nani's tea was a ritual — the Darjeeling, the porcelain, the four-minute steep, the conversation that happened over it, because Nani did not have conversations without: tea, the way a courtroom did not have proceedings without: a judge. The tea was: the authority.

She poured. The teapot was: the blue one, the Wedgwood that had survived three generations and one earthquake (Uttarkashi, 1991; the teapot had fallen from the shelf and landed in a basket of knitting yarn, which Nani considered: divine intervention and which the family considered: physics).

"You're troubled," she said.

"I'm not troubled."

"Your left knee is bouncing. You bounce your left knee when you're troubled. You've been doing it since you were: six."

I stopped bouncing. The knee: resumed. Apparently the knee was also not interested in my: instructions.

"There's a new player on the Wildcats," I said. "Veer Malhotra. From Jalandhar."

"And?"

"And Tanvi is coaching him. Individually."

"And?"

"And — nothing. I'm: informing you."

"You're informing me about a woman coaching a man at the sport she: coaches. This is: news?"

"It's not — it's the way he: looks at her, Nani."

"How does he look at her?"

"Like she's — like she's: remarkable."

"She is: remarkable."

"I know she's remarkable. I've known she's remarkable since we were eight and she organised the entire colony cricket match including: umpiring, scoring, and a half-time snack schedule."

Nani set down her teacup. The Wedgwood on the saucer made a: sound. A small, precise, porcelain: sound. The sound of a grandmother about to say something that her grandson was: not ready for.

"Beta," she said. "You have loved that girl since you were: ten years old. You have fought with her, teased her, pranked her, annoyed her, sat on her bathroom floor at 3 AM, made her idlis from her mother's recipe, and driven to Solan for: curry leaves. If another man looking at her bothers you, perhaps it is time to: stop pretending."

"I'm not pretending."

"You are pretending so hard that even the pretending is: pretending. You are layers of pretending. You are a Russian doll of: pretending."

"Nani—"

"When your grandfather decided he loved me, he told me. He did not drive to Solan for curry leaves and hope I would: decode it. He stood in my father's drawing room and said: 'I love your daughter, and I would like to marry her, and I have brought: mangoes.' The mangoes were: unnecessary. But the sentiment was: clear."

"Times were: different, Nani."

"Times are: always different. Love is: always the same. Tell the girl. Or lose her to the man from Jalandhar who has: better shoulders and: worse intentions."

"You haven't even met him."

"I don't need to meet him. He's from Jalandhar. I know: Jalandhar."

The Jalandhar prejudice was: Nani's. Unshakeable. Based on a single incident in 1967 involving a Jalandhar businessman who had sold her grandfather a faulty tractor. The tractor had haunted: three generations of Bhardwaj family opinion regarding: Jalandhar.

I finished the tea. Kissed Nani's forehead. The forehead that was: warm, lined, the forehead of a woman who had survived a husband's death, a granddaughter's death, three earthquakes, and seventy-two Kasauli winters, and who was: still here, in her rocking chair, knitting scarves for: dogs.

"I'll think about it," I said.

"Don't think," Nani said. "Thinking is: what cowards do instead of acting."